The deeper you get into rooting your Android device, the more you’ll find to play around with. If you’re an avid gamer and you’re looking for more control over your graphics settings, the kind that you might get with a PC, then GLTools is definitely the app for you. It lets you tinker with a whole heap of settings that you normally wouldn’t be able to.

You’ll need to know a decent amount of graphics terminology, and you’ll need a rooted device to make it all work. You can grab the app itself from the Play store, but it needs root access to play around with the games you’ve installed on your phone or tablet. It’s especially handy if you’re running a lower-end device and want to give things a bit of a kick. When you’re ready, go ahead and visit the Play store.

Download the app

First up, you’ll want to grab the GLTools app from the Play store. The app is not free, so unless you’re serious about enhancing your graphics performance, it might not be worth the money. Once it’s installed, which shouldn’t take too long, find the app’s icon and tap on it.

Choose your settings

Now choose which plugin to use with GLTools. Tap TEX(DE)coder to select it. This gives you more options than the default and lets you decompress and recompress textures to different sizes. Check the agreement boxes at the bottom of the page then tap Install.

Give root access

Next you’ll need to give root access to the app so it can install the new plugin in a partition. Just tapping Install works fine, but if you would prefer, you can Install using Recovery. Either way your device will reboot. This will take a couple of minutes to complete rebooting.

Find the app

Once your device has finished rebooting, it’s time to find the app and get tinkering. Tap on the icon and you’ll see a list of the apps you have already installed on your phone or tablet, as well as an option that enables you to change the default settings.

Find the game

Scroll through the big list of app names and find a game you’d like to play around with. Tap on it and you’ll see a menu with all sorts of different options. Here’s where knowing your graphical terminology comes in handy. Scroll down to GPU Name/Emulation.

Fool your phone

Get a better performance on lower-end devices by making it think that you’re running a different processor. Tap the check boxes, then tap Use A Template to select a premade template for a more powerful chipset. Turn down graphics options to get more speed.